


Of doom and determination

by Kes



Series: Thor 2 Rewritten: The Shaded Tree [9]
Category: Thor (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon, F/M, Gen, Science
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-16
Updated: 2014-09-26
Packaged: 2018-02-17 16:26:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 7,154
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2315996
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kes/pseuds/Kes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The day dawns sunny and gentle, Jane Foster's first under an alien sky, and she knows what she plans to do with it. Across the Nine Realms, the peace is settling in, but there is danger in the wind.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

As the first rays of morning light shine bright into the best of the Thrudvangar lodge’s quarters, Jane gives up on her shallow sleep filled with red-tinged dreams of war and destruction, has a brief moment of heart-constricting terror at remembering her impending death, and gets up. It’s her first morning on an alien world, and she has better things to do. While she waits for her breathing to return to normal and her hands to stop shaking, she looks around the room and consciously notes each item. The whole is all pale gold stone, with red tapestries and intricate screens, and the floor is warm beneath her feet. A bed, low and also heated, with two thin bedsheets and a hard headrest that she had been glad she was short enough to ignore. A basin with a shelf of strange-looking combs, pots and cloths around the side. A small table with a bench and fruitbowl. An upright desk with what might possibly be writing utensils on it. A line of mannequins holding three dresses, beautiful creations in shades of autumn. A circle set into the floor beside the desk of patterns that glowed faintly blue. A balcony. The door Thor said led to the toilet.

With that thought, she pushes herself up onto legs that do, in fact, hold her weight and goes to investigate. Inside, it’s the same gold stone as the rest, lit by a screened opening. Along one side is a deep bath that would probably fill from an opening like a waterfall along the long side, and the other side houses another basin and a bench with a hole in it.

She only tears herself away from the fascinating washcloth-cleaner, with its blasts of foamed water and incredibly strong suction, when there is a knock at the outer door. _Thor?_ But the voice is not his, and a plainly-dressed girl with bright black eyes and a tray answers her invitation in. “I’m Afrith, um, and this is your breakfast, and would you like any help getting dressed?”

The breakfast is huge and looks delicious, but all Jane feels is slightly nauseated. “Um. Thank you.” Why hadn’t she expected there to be staff working here, in a monarchical world? “No, thanks, I’ll try and figure it out myself.”

“If you need help, call; most ladies don’t dress alone,” Afrith says, and places the tray on the table. “If nothing else, make sure you drink what’s in the green goblet; my lord Thor had it sent down from the healing room specially.”

“He’s here? And what does it do?” The liquid inside looks like ink, with the ghosts of brown swirling across its surface.

“Not yet.” Afrith looks at her sideways, then sniffs the air above it. “It’s a fortifier, from the smell – cools and conserves, helps keep in the energy in the channels so that it doesn’t start burning through your body’s resources. Though there’s something else added that I don’t know. Why are you taking it?”

Jane chooses her words carefully, though the clutching at the bottom of her innards seems to have retreated into a simple hollowness. “There’s something in me burning up my life force, apparently.”

“Really? Not a normal disease, then? It might be some kind of inhibitor, I suppose, if my lady Eir knows what the thing is. Is it true you’re from Midgard?”

“Yeah.”

Wonderingly, the girl shakes her head. “It’ll be strong for you. I’ve not met any from Midgard, do you not have this there, then?”

She recognises the feeling behind the tone of voice; it’s the same as when she considers that high speed transport here is apparently horse-drawn carriages. “I just drink coffee.”

Before Afrith can respond, a voice from outside shouts, “Afrith, girl, I need you!” and with a brief dip of the head, she darts out.

Once Jane is dressed – and it is complicated, but an astrophysicist who has been building her own equipment for years cannot be bested by a set of dress fastenings – she takes the goblet and her notebook out onto the balcony, and drains it dry before she can think about how awful it seems. To her surprise, the taste is far milder than the smell.

There is nowhere to sit, so she puts the notebook onto the parapet wall and looks outwards, across a lake and onto Gladsheim. The palace rises out of a cluster of trees and low buildings to her right, and to her left several large buildings, worn with age, rise like swords from the ground along a walkway of two levels. For all the sun has only just risen, they are bustling. Straight ahead the river that feeds the lake abruptly vanishes into a series of canyons and waterfalls, though there are still buildings there. At intervals, barely distinguishable from the rest of the high buildings held in this jagged bowl of the mountains, are gun towers, though there is also one huger than the rest sat groundbound on the upper walkway. There is a thousand lifetimes’ worth of discovery here, and –

Jane opens the notebook to the next blank page, and starts writing, everything she can remember from the night before. She has reached her stars. The greatest minds on Earth told her, time and again, that what she was chasing was a mirage, was impossible, and it is not. The king of Asgard is not going to convince her that survival is impossible, either.


	2. Chapter 2

Thor is fairly sure that Fandral must have had his ear pressed against the door of his quarters. At any rate, the knock comes before he has finished dressing, just after he misses the bench and puts a goblet on empty air. His heart sinks; he had not wanted to see anyone this morning, not before he vanishes through the secret ways to the lodge. But he has a duty to his friends, as friends and as nobles of Asgard, so he calls him in.

Unlike Thor, Fandral is wearing armour – prisoner transport duty on Vanaheim, he remembers mechanically. “I heard the news about the Midgardian, Jane. I am –”

“How many have?” He doesn’t want to carry the weight of Fandral’s condolences. The thought sets him thinking about Loki’s apparent death, two years ago, and the weight of all the mourning and the eyes on him, the eyes that would never have showed blame, but from which he had read it anyway. _If I had not..._ It is too late.

One of the clips on the long-unworn grey-blue overtunic is stiff, and Fandral darts in to help. “You should get these refitted unless you plan on resurrecting this design, and I hated it, so please don’t. Mostly the servants and their friends, but I would place no faith in it staying with them. First Legion, at least, understand discretion. I understand, Thor, but there will be problems.”

“Do you think I don’t know? There was nothing else to be done.”

“I just don’t want you to charge in blind,” he says, and gives Thor a slap on the back. “If it’s any consolation, not many will contest you for now, after all you’ve done.”

It’s no consolation at all, and the long light room filled with ancient furniture and tapestries seems smaller. “Excuse me, Fandral; I must see Jane, and are you not expected on Vanaheim?”

“Sif and Hogun are attending the funeral there, and the rest of us need not arrive until the sun is higher.” Fandral takes a deep breath and removes first one, then the other glove; normally arriving at a suitable phrasing is easier than this. “Besides, I would not like you to take that long, dark tunnel alone, and I should regard it as a personal failing if Jane were to lack visitors.” The sick should not be alone, and she must be, a lone mortal out there in the Thrudvangar lodge which is the only logical place for Thor to have taken her. No wonder their people multiply so fast, with their short lives.

“How do you know about the tunnel?”

He laughs, still coiled and waiting for Thor’s true response. “I have a certain kinswoman who has, ah, hinted of its presence.”

“She showed me where to find it, when we arrived.” Thor shakes his head. “I cannot ask you to.”

“Yes, and you didn’t.”

Thor’s shoulders sag and he caves, as Fandral had suspected he would. As he turns the panel to reveal the dimly lit stairs below, Fandral remarks, “You left too early to see the real antics.”

“I have seen them before.”

Always before, a good drinking story could set the other man roaring with laughter – and there were plenty, last night. Arnfinn’s luxurious crop of black hair will never be the same, and nor will the rafter, and they will still be finding Sigvard’s second-best gamesticks around that sector of the city in a century. He had hoped that even now, such stories would provide diversion. Fandral realises his step is springy with agitation, and slows it.

Jane does not look like a woman dying of some unknown infection in her energy system, when they arrive. She is up, dressed in a slightly dated Asgardian afternoon robe and sitting at a small table in the best rooms in the lodge scribbling away in a codex with a strange, slim pen from Earth. (When Fandral’s own father had died, his life force shrivelling in its channels and the body breaking down around it, he had taken to his bed with his family and friends about him, and scarce risen again once it was deemed to be fatal. It had been then that he himself had taken on the headship of the clan, retaining Fensalir into the third generation.) “I need to get in that library,” is the first thing she says, without looking up.

“I will try and arrange something, but there will be no-one to unlock it until noon. How do you feel?” Thor says, and hurries over to her. “You should be resting, not working.”

“I couldn’t get Netflix. Anyway, I know your dad said there was nothing to be done, but I’ve got to try anyway – can you have a look at this? I’m trying to find out what’s going on, properly – I wish I was a biologist right now, but I’m not sure that would help with this – and this energy system is completely new to me.”

Fandral suddenly has a vivid memory of sitting in the New Mexico kitchen listening to Volstagg and Thor arguing about Loki on one side and on the other Jane and the older mortal arguing about scientific principles that ranged from the elementary to the unsuspected. He bows. “Jane Foster, I wish we could have met again in happier circumstances.”

“What? Oh, hi. Volstagg, isn’t it?”

“Fandral, actually.” He decides not to play offended. “Volstagg is twice my size.”

“Oh, yeah, I remember now, you had that long conversation with Darcy.” Glancing back at Thor, she adds, “Do you know any details on this energy, or the mechanism of interaction with the body? Anything like that.”

Thor does his best, but he is acutely aware that for this purpose she needs far more precise information than he can supply. “It will be in the library. I wish we could ask Father.”

“Why?”

“When I met you, I was just a man – as any man of Earth. That was Father’s doing. He understands the body, and the variations in bodies of the people of Yggdrasill, as few others do. But –”

“He hates me, I know.” Jane frowns. It feels as though her brain is trying to chase a hundred strands at once, and the resolution of the energy system puzzle – easier to think of than ‘her cure’ – seems further away than Andromeda.

“I do not think he hates you, precisely.”

“Really? Because he gave a good impression of a guy who thinks I’m around the same order of existence as pig shit.” A small part of her mind whispers that he may be right – she shuts it down with practiced determination. Sure, going into that portal wasn’t the best idea she has had, but firstly the consequences are _hers_ , he isn’t the one dying of it, secondly it was a reasonable choice with the information and goals she had at the time, and thirdly even if none of that was true that doesn’t make her pig shit. _This is_ true _, and I_ will _believe it._

Shoulders drooping under the dull navy cloak he wears, Thor says, “While we were rebuilding this Bifrost, at first... he spoke well of you, at least of your kindness to me. It was only as it became clear that I would not forget you that his disapproval grew, and I was not prepared for his reaction last night.”

“Oh, so he only hates me _here_. Great.” She rubs her eyes, not sure where to go from here. “So when can I get into the library, did you say?”

As Thor answers, Fandral, standing in the middle of the room feeling neglected, asks, “What is it that ails you, besides a problem with the energy system?”

“The Aether – it’s a fluid cosmic artefact from before the universe, associated with the dark elves – is using me as a host, only it’s too energetic for my body to take and it’s burning up my life force.” She says it quickly, but rather than meet Fandral’s gaze decides to get up and check her phone’s charge. While sitting down, she had felt all right, but standing triggers a rush of red disorientation. She clutches the table, stomach churning, and abruptly bolts for the bathroom and vomits.

Thor doesn’t follow her, but she can hear his voice asking if she is all right outside. _Am I?_ Having vomited, she has no desire to do it again, and she feels steadier on her feet. A little faint, an itching and a swirling from the Aether – “I’m okay,” she says, and washes her face, tries to catch the washcloth-cleaner in its act again until the last of the churning settles.

“How long have you been working on it?” Fandral asks as she emerges.

“I got up at dawn, so, since then, I suppose.”

Thor frowns. “Be careful – I know you will hate to leave the library to rest, and so now would be the time for it.”

“I tried, but I get bored and then I get miserable.”

“Will you consent to being diverted by us?”

Jane raises an eyebrow, remembers Darcy telling her how charming Fandral the Dashing was. She is on the verge of refusing when she catches Thor’s eye. It has been two years, and there is a whole new world to talk about – and perhaps she needs to give it to her subconscious for a while. “Fine.”

“Shall I take the bench outside?”

“Sure, but I’m taking the notebook.” Thor lifts the heavy bench like she would lift a kitchen chair, and they park themselves on it; she deliberately sits at the end, and Thor invites Fandral to take the other side. To her vague annoyance, he insists on pointing out every notable landmark. The information is interesting, but neither she nor Thor can really talk to each other through it.

“And that is an old fire cannon from Thor’s grandfather’s reign, isn’t it? Very clumsy, in comparison to our new pieces.”

“Yes – one of the few we did not lose against the dark elves.” The thought seems to send Thor deep into thought.

“It’s strange their artefact of power should reappear now, with the Convergence building. I thought it had been destroyed.”

“So did I. Mother told me, when she was telling me these stories as a child, and Father did when I was a little older.”

Jane shakes her head, says the thing that has been crawling in the back of her mind ever since she heard it. “I can’t get my head around Bor killing them all.”

“They would have destroyed the universe,” Fandral says. “Every realm, every star, extinguished, crumpled, destroyed.”

“What, every single dark elf?” She wishes Darcy was here. “Civilians? Children?”

Silence. Thor feels like screaming, the tension tearing at his throat, the cold wind screaming with Jotun terror and haunted by the old refrain of monster, the stories, the glory that covers the cost. “I know,” he says, just to stop Fandral replying, just in case. “But it is little remembered here.”

The silence comes back, thicker and heavier. Fandral knows why Thor has spoken. The mistrust stings, but he can understand it, and curses himself for the remark. The discussion never had is a barrier between them, a discussion of war and justifiable force and prevention – condemning Loki had been easy. Now, both the tactical reasoning behind Bor’s decision that he has known all his life and the repugnance of wiping an entire species of thinking beings out seem hollow, for all he believes and understands both. Before Thor came back, everything had seemed so simple. At least Thor has found a position he can stick to. 

Eventually Jane can bear it no more, and changes the subject. “Can you tell me more about the Convergence?” she asks. “Your dad only told me that the nine worlds line up every five thousand years, and the first part I got from what I was doing on Earth.”

“Your world is called Midgard, for its place at the heart of Yggdrasill –”

“Yggdrasill is –”

“I know what Yggdrasill is. Carry on, Thor.”

The slightly shaky smile Fandral gives her in return lifts some of the shadow that hangs over the conversation, and Thor manages to shake some of the cold from his bones with Jane’s contagious enthusiasm for the universe. “The other eight orbit around it, though the precise nature of Yggdrasill, as you know, means that it cannot be as simple as a world around a sun. Every five thousand years, their paths align – they converge upon each other, and stack up so that the threads of reality they rest upon touch, creating the portals you were observing. Heimdall says that all of the worlds will be visible from here, opened out onto each other, when it is in full force and the realities are mingling. It is the presence of a realm in the Convergence, meaning that it is the centrepoint of its locality’s contact with Yggdrasill, that makes it one of the nine.”

“Yeah, I did theorise that – that the phenomenon I was observing in New Mexico were manifestations of Yggdrasill’s contact with Earth, and that the other realms must have that in order to be considered realms, but the Convergence I hadn’t considered.” Frantically she scribbles away in her notebook, and as the conversation continues thinks about asking Thor to swear that if she dies, this notebook be returned to Darcy (who should make a fine astrophysicist, in time, if she chooses, and if she does not will make a good choice of who to pass it on to.) As she makes up her mind, a thunderous clang splits the cold air. Again it sounds, and again, and again – seven times, in all. Then silence. The thought flees her mind.

“Oh, curses!” Fandral exclaims. “Please do excuse me, Jane.”

“Of course,” she says, wondering what the clanging summons him to.

“I am sorry that I couldn’t be of greater assistance. I wonder – have you thought of asking your mother about the Aether, Thor? She has studied widely, after all, and I am sure she would be pleased to meet Jane.”

“She may already be on her way, if I know my mother. But thank you – could you dispatch a messenger? And to the library. The communications beams here still don’t work.” Thor says, getting up and turning out pockets cunningly hidden in his cloak. At last, he finds a tiny roll of something and scribbles on it with the Asgardian pen she had left aside. Curious, she peers over his shoulders; it seems to be a simple pattern, until he breathes upon and swipes his thumb over it, when a brief flash of gold rolls it inwards. “This is for the library. I hope your labours on Vanaheim are not too arduous.”

“They would be the better for your company, but I am sure I will survive them. Farewell,” Fandral says, bows, and leaves at a run.

“Where’s he going and what’s that noise?” she asks, having decided to alphabetise her list of questions.

“Vanaheim was host to the final battle of the wars, and there are still prisoners there. That was the call to those on prisoner transport duty – under the warriors three – to go to the Bifrost. Seven chimes, because it is the seventh realm below us in the Convergence.”

“Where’s Earth?”

“Fourth.”

“I’m not sure ‘below’ is the right word, we’re dealing with more complex dimensional interactions than that.” Glad of his heavy, all-enveloping cloak – though exasperated with the need for it – she leans on his shoulder and tries to think how to ask the question she cannot alphabetise. Maybe it isn’t fair, not with this within her, but it will always hover between them if she does not. “In New Mexico, when you were leaving, I kissed you – I know that’s not really something that can happen, with the –” she waves vaguely at her skin “– but, if it was, um, is that a thing we’re still interested in, or was it only a thing two years ago, or did I completely misread things? I just want to know where things stand.” The embarrassment that had washed over her from time to time floods back in full force, setting the Aether swirling, and she stares straight ahead. The worst part is not knowing how this all works on Asgard, whether their standards and signals and ways of talking about it are different, and she has had plenty of time to think of all the places the wires could have got crossed. This is probably going to make everything horribly awkward, completely derail everything she’s working on –

Thor takes her hand through a fold of his cloak, though it is a while before he speaks, as though he is waiting for her to pull away. “You did not misread me, Jane,” he says, tentatively.

The answering surge of happiness within her is barely the Aether at all, and she whispers, “Good,” and snuggles up closer. She is not so weak, yet; the alphabet can wait a few minutes.


	3. Chapter 3

Sif has been given what she is assured is a place of honour, but privately surmises is a convenient place to keep her out of the way. While almost everyone else is clustered around the too-large circle of jars, moving in patterns that she does not understand, she has been placed on a platform further back with Hogun, one or two outlanders who happened to be staying in Youghai and a few elderly people too old to take part. Among the orange-clad multitude, she stands out in deep crimson and dark grey, the tunic unadorned but finely-made and the cloak edged with tiny pearls from Alfheim; it would not do to wear armour now.

This is an ancient custom, that the commander of the victorious side in a battle should attend any funeral of allies’ casualties they are not barred from, but it has not been practiced since the days of Buri. Only in this war have they begun doing it again. Necessary, but a grim duty nonetheless; today more than most, since the evening will hold the Asgardian war funeral.

Before her the funerary proceedings continue, unfamiliar singing that she can hear both as sound and as a distilled expression of a thousand generations’ griefs, the shuffling movement around the burial ground, the autumn-toned marks each person leaves on the clay jars. The dead have already been placed within them and sealed.

The battle had not been unexpected. Heimdall had noticed the marauders descending on continental Vanaheim and staking out positions in the hills in good time, and she took her active legion down to make sure that they did not hit the population, and in time drive them from the world. There was little action at first, just a series of manoeuvres, skirmishing – as war so often is. Pitched battles are rare, and so chancy that a commander not dazzled by glory is wise to avoid them. And so she had, until they gained reinforcements, refugees from battles elsewhere in Yggdrasill, that gave them the confidence to march for the nearest settlements. Her forces had hurried and met them at Youghai, and Heimdall had sent contingents from Fourth, Fifth and Sixth (with their commanders) to pen them in, drive them all to the same battlefield and end it there and then. Most of the battle was fought outside of the village, but it still suffered, and it had done so because of the course of the war that she half-plotted.

And so now she stands here, face still and sombre, watching people she never knew and and never will be mourned. Hogun’s presence makes it less of a lonely ordeal, at least, for all he is arrayed in the same orange as the mourners – a gesture of his own ties to the region.

When at last it is over – still morning in Asgard, for all the sun is sinking here – she takes herself away from the village with Hogun to await the turmoil in the sky that will herald Fandral and Volstagg with their men to move the prisoners. They’re a mixed lot, some familiar species and others not, some that she remembers shepherding into the spear-enclosure and some, like the tall one with spikes everywhere, that she does not – but there are such a lot. Once the peace is proclaimed, Asgard can start looking, asking, trying to understand why chaos erupted so quickly and completely. Where had these people come from? Heimdall had not seen it; understandable, with nine realms and hundreds more beyond to watch and no known point of focus, but it obscures the mystery still further. “They must have been sent,” Hogun says, slowly. “Sent, or pushed out of their own place.”

“They haven’t come to settle, though – I don’t think they were pushed.” The sent theory has a terrifying, chilling ring of truth to it – but who could, and who would? Such a possibility raises the spectre of a longer, harder war. Fiddling with the edge of her cloak, she adds, “If you are right, it will go ill for us. Another war, now...”

“I know.”

They are saved from dwelling on this possibility for too long by the Bifrost shooting out of the sky, depositing a subdued group from Fourth and Fifth legion. Sif and Hogun are not on prisoner transport duty, but they still stroll over and give Fandral and Volstagg some company for the organisation. From one of the multiple plinths that scatter the entire area, Fandral surveys the spear-enclosure that holds the prisoners, and Volstagg passes orders on about how to get it, and the prisoners, moving. “Careful to the north-east, there seems to be a spear missing,” Fandral calls out.

The man it is passed on to nods. “Shouldn’t wonder. There was a breakout attempt over there, I think, last night.”

As they continue, Volstagg says to her and Hogun, “Have you heard about Thor?”

“Doing what?” Worry splits her stomach.

“He’s only brought the mortal, Jane, you remember, to Asgard. Fandral says she’s dying.”

“ _What?_ ” For all Volstagg is a champion of tall tales, she can detect nothing but sincerity in face, voice or body. “I thought the Allfather had strictly forbidden it!”

“Well, you know what Thor’s like.”

Yes – but this sounds more like the old Thor, the Thor whose response to ‘it is forbidden,’ was ‘it must be done!’ But if she is dying, then... perhaps. Surely it has not been that long? It will destroy Thor – “What of?” Hogun asks.

“The mortal? Some strange cosmic infection of the energy system.”

Had he known, when she spoke to him last night? Or was that the news that Heimdall had had to give him? Heimdall had said no word, when she came through this morning, but why would he? It seems improbable, for a mortal to get something as strange as that; she herself, one of the high nobility of Asgard, with centuries of education in the highest matters, has never heard of such a disease. But if any of them could, it would be Jane Foster, who crackled with energy and life and fury, for all the frailty of her people.

“...I don’t know what to say to him when I see him because – Fandral says his father absolutely laid into the girl for being here, and I do think that’s cruel, but I still don’t think this is the place for her, among a lot of strangers who aren’t even her species – yes, you need at least another five men back there, they’ve bunched up – it seems that she forgot our names and greeted him as though he was me, though that might just be mortal frailty – Sigvard! What in the nine worlds is that formation?”

“What of the healers?” Sif ignores the dirty look one of the unit leaders of Fifth is giving her; he should be able to tell that she isn’t trying to muscle in on Volstagg’s command, given her dress and focus.

“They don’t know what to do either – you two head east to join Drengur –”

Under the relentless pressure of the task at hand, they get little more out of him.

Back on Asgard, the four of them congregate at the head of the long column for the journey down the bridge, still coursing with light as yet more soldiers and prisoners come through. “This is the last lot, thank all ancestors,” Volstagg says, wiping his brow. “Any more, and the dungeons will burst.”

“We’ll have to set up emergency courts anyway,” she replies, voice weary.

Volstagg shakes his head. “Who sends an army out with no coherent command structure?”

“My friend, if they are sent there is a coherent command structure; do try to listen to what you’re saying.”

Hogun and Sif exchange a look.

“Just because my words come quickly does not make them thoughtless. These marauders are too similar, appeared too quickly – and you were not at Austskog. I will stake my oath that the numbers I fought there could not have fitted in the caves I flushed them out of, and they came at the precise moment they needed my gaze away from Ofradhaug.”

“I agree.”

“Yes – that doesn’t mean they don’t have a command structure. I grant, their appearance is ominous –”

Shouts ring out from behind them, and they turn as one. A struggle is happening at the front of the column, two guards wrestling a huge person with a red-and-brown checked hood. “Oh for –” Volstagg mutters, and he and Fandral begin to stride towards it.

One of the guards is knocked flying, nearly falling from the bridge, by another person’s intervention; a woman with huge horns as wide again as her body. She ducks Volstagg’s axe, takes a cut along the arm from Fandral’s sword, sprints away from another guard in pursuit and makes for the edge. It takes both Sif and Hogun, unarmed as they are, charging into her too low for her horns to gore them to stop her. “What are you doing?” Sif demands. “You were to stay in line!”

“Better to die by water than Asgardian axe,” she spits back.

“What have you done to bring it on you?”

Instead of answering him, she tries to hit Hogun with a horn – a hand grabs it, and two guards haul her up and out of the way. Struggling, she disappears back into the column.

“What a disgrace. The last action of these wars, and it’s that.” Volstagg thrusts the axe back into its holdings in disgust.

Shaking her head, she asks, “You would rather another battle?” just as Fandral finishes wiping his blade down and sheathes it, frowning. “Are you all right?”

“Yes, yes, of – well, she reminded me of something the Midgardian, Jane Foster, said this morning. We will not be executing them all, surely?”

“I doubt it; there are too many, I think.” Sif shakes her head. They will find out, in time, since it will be they who lead emergency courts. “Volstagg mentioned that she was here.”

He seizes the topic almost eagerly. “Yes, it’s true. Some of the rumours are quite ugly – it’s a very unfortunate time – that’s why I decided to tell him – and thence you, because I know how much he loves a good story – rather than let you find out, Thor’s told his mother as well.”

With a huff, Volstagg starts to talk, but is interrupted by Hogun. “What is it?”

“The Aether – the dark elves were using it, last Convergence, if you remember the story, but –”

He shakes his head. “The second of six.”

Her mind follows his immediately – no wonder she hasn’t heard of such a disease. “So it was not destroyed.”

“I did not believe that such a thing could perish.”

Fandral shakes his head. “I didn’t even think of that.”

“Oh, I hope Heimdall has his eyes open.”

“So do we all, my friend. So do we all.”


	4. Chapter 4

The calm quiet on the bench outside doesn’t last. With the Aether constantly shifting inside her, every second feels wasted, and remembering that sometimes the subconscious needs to get to work before the conscious can understand doesn’t ease that. By the time Thor’s mother sends a message of arrival, the book is open again and she is theorising about the Aether as a sort of life-energy equivalent of plasma, its charges interacting with and burning out receptors and connective mechanisms of the channels with the body. Thor’s explication of its destructive nature is prompting a sub-train of thought about the meeting of thing and anti-thing, which does not line up with the fact that she is still sitting here, patently not annihilated, and the interruption is almost welcome.

Frigga turns out to be a tall woman in amber-green and silver, who greets Jane with a smile that she can’t quite tell the sincerity of. “I was eager to meet you,” she says, once the introductions have been made and she has laid the books she carries on the table. “Thor has told me much about you, and besides, I have not had a chance to thank you for taking him in two years ago. I do hope he didn’t eat his way through your whole kitchen.”

From out of the corner of her eye, Jane can see Thor’s red face and is fairly sure hers matches it. Is everyone’s reaction to her here going to be, ‘yes, I’ve heard’? “It’s fine, I mean, my kitchen was a, um.” Could you say that her kitchen had basically been a box of Pop-Tarts the first morning to a queen? It seems to be a strange side effect of not being yelled at; suddenly she feels far odder-shaped than she felt under Odin’s withering gaze.

Thor spots how short the shadows are, and offers food, “to allow you to return the favour.” That, at least, seems to break the worst of the tension.

“Is that a challenge?” Jane asks. “No, I’m not really hungry.”

“No – but you should eat, nonetheless. Thor, I trust you keep your kitchen here well-stocked; she will need a strong broth, nothing heavy, with limorlie in it. Your body needs something to replenish itself where the excess energy is searing it.”

The idea of eating seems unthinkable, for all she is distantly aware she is hungry. “Searing it? Do you mean burning, or using up?” She wishes she could understand what Frigga – what the queen – had said should be in it; she knows that something was said and that it had meaning, but the word is simply formless sound to her, like hearing a foreign language at the other end of a corridor.

“This is an unusual circumstance. I know something of the Aether as a cosmic artefact, though by the time I was studying it was long hidden and my tutors believed it destroyed, but I know little of it as a parasite. Your circumstance is not what we normally see, in energy system problems; in your case, there is too much energy in them rather than too little. Don’t look so surprised, Thor, I spoke to Eir this morning; it has been a long time since my counsel in such matters has been sought, but you are not the first.”

 _…not survive the energy surging within her_ , the woman had said. So, the channels can only take a certain amount; anything over that and it – abrades in some way, as excess energy does. “Is the Aether the same sort of thing as the life energy, then? Or is it just that it has the same particle shape and is thus compatible with the same systems? I’ve been thinking that it might be burning out whatever mechanism the life energy system uses to, um, interact with everything else.”

“The Aether is a potential world-eater – have you been told? Under certain circumstances, it finds ambient energy channels and sucks through them, destroying them and their ability to feed the environment around them, yes. I assume it is doing the same thing to your energy system, but slower; Malekith planned to unleash this during a single Convergence, so it must work fast. It isn’t the same thing as life energy – it is too ancient – but it has much in common with it, as with dark energy and the like; all of these relics are compatible with the energy system of living beings.”

“So it can interact with the dark energy? To destroy worlds, it might interact with Yggdrasill as with a body… Perhaps it’s the direction from a living being that causes the speed. I think –” Jane goes diving for her notes, conscious that some of her theorising is obviously not so far off after all; for now, the problem does not feel like an impenetrable wall. It is also nearer her field of expertise than she expected.

Talking ideas through with other people with relevent knowledge is something that she is a firm believer in, and always has been. It’s one of the hardest things about SHIELD’s conditions of silence, that the only person she can talk truly freely with is Darcy. Now, with two people with relevent – and different – knowledge willing to explain things and talk theories, there is even the edge of the old buzz of discovery twisting around her bones, distinct from the Aether.


	5. Chapter 5

The clatter of weapons announces another procession of _companions_ , and Loki carefully places the codex back into the middle of the disorganised pile, the top one undisturbed so as to visibly gather dust. They are still exactly where the guard who brought them – First Legion, as all who guard here, though wearing a green-and-silver braid upon his swordhilt – dumped them, and there they will remain. If Frigga thinks she can buy his gratitude with books, she is sorely mistaken.

He’s been weaving the spell into the ambient energy of the cell since his arrival – how long ago? A heartbeat and an eternity – and now he yanks it into place again with a twist of the hand. They will get no response of him, he is done with responding to them; if they want to believe lies he will feed them a feast of them. The illusion settles over him, and safe under it he darts to the golden energy wall and peers as far down the long hall as he can see. If he cannot have physical privacy, at least he can create it himself.

More of the same. Ragged men, battered and weary, cheaply armoured with no spark of anything to them – useless. He digs the fingers of one hand into the matrix of energy that bounds the cell, ignoring the stinging, burning sensation. Thor’s punishment gets him friends who have to be dragged out of the path of a lightning bolt for him, women for whom he will fight even him, and Loki gets a lonely cell and these dull, swarming raider types. _Cheaper than Chitauri, but far less effectual._ The concept of organisation has probably never occurred to them. There’s not even anyone familiar, however irrational he knows the hope is; the outer twigs of Yggdrasill are long and embrace many a realm, a large area from which to find the few he knows.

The most promising of the bunch is small, with darting brown eyes and an armoured red coat that looks like it fits, but he is shoved into the next cell, separated by a wall neither of them can communicate through. Loki clenches his fist – and snatches it away from the barrier, cursing. The illusion flickers, making a guard jump and stare at him, and he glares at it.

Slowly the hall fills, and empties again, until even the cell opposite is full. This is the furthest corner of Bor’s enormous dungeon complex, and they must be desperate, to use it now that he has been installed here. (or is it a lesson? _See, you do not need to kill the vanquished._ As though a history can be erased.) All the trouble of a secret trial, potentially undone by the wrong prisoner saying the wrong thing at the wrong time. But none of the ones in that cell look that bright, and Loki sits down on his bed again, glaring into strangely blurry nothingness. Spending the rest of a five thousand year lifespan in here is unthinkable. _Your father acts for a reason._ What reason? He had been prepared for exile. He had been prepared for death. He had been ready to spit at a penitence sentence until it was withdrawn. But this life of pointless scrabbling at the walls of his own mind –

 _At least Jotunheim will never have me, after what I have done._ So that plan must come to naught – but what use is a relic that no-one can use and no-one will pay for and no-one knows about?

Loki does not shred his bedclothes, nor does he tear up books. That would betray him. But illusions can be rebuilt and destroyed, invisibly, as many times as he likes, and the more he does them the less he will forget.

Down the hall someone screams, a long, high-pitched wail of agony. He ignores it. These people are always fighting each other like caged wolves. Again he tears the symbols of the house of Buri to shreds in seeming, piece by piece, thread by thread, column by column.


End file.
